Nine visits in five years. Never once on a Sunday.
Fat Jim's shuts on Sundays and on public holidays, which is the tell. Nine visits since 2021, why the ribeye beats the tenderloin, and the discount rule most diners get wrong.
I went looking for the answer in my own camera roll. Nine photographs of the same steak at Fat Jim’s, the first from May 2021 and the last from two days ago. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Across five years and three months, not one of them is a Sunday.
That is not my schedule. Fat Jim’s is closed on Sundays. It is also closed on public holidays, which is the stranger of the two decisions, because a holiday in this country is exactly when everyone goes looking for somewhere to eat. A steakhouse that shuts its doors on the busiest days of the year is telling you something before you have read a word of the menu.
What it is telling you is who does the cooking. Cebu Daily News named them when it wrote the place up: Jonathan Young runs it, his wife Abigail is in it with him, and his sister Fatima is the head chef. A kitchen run by one family keeps one family’s hours. You can read the closed Sunday as lost revenue or as the reason the plate has not drifted in five years. I have nine photographs that argue for the second one.
Order the ribeye, not the tenderloin
I have had both across these visits and it is not close. The tenderloin is the cut people order when they want to be safe, and it is fine, and it is also the one you will forget on the drive home. The ribeye is the reason to come. It is the cut with the fat running through it, and fat is where the flavour lives when a kitchen is grilling rather than hiding the beef under a sauce.
Their headline steak is a Certified Angus rib eye, 400 grams, and it comes with vegetable sides and a choice of plain rice, mashed potato, garlic rice or french fries. That choice is visible in my own frames and it took me years to notice it. The 2021 plates are mashed potato and carrots. September 2023 is rice, with a small US Beef flag stuck in the meat. By 2026 it is fries on a wooden board with a romaine heart. Nothing changed except what I asked for.
The house sauces are peppercorn and mushroom gravy, and the gravy arrives in its own boat rather than poured over the meat, which is the correct way round and rarer than it should be. Ask for it on the side even if they were going to do that anyway.
About that promo price, and the 20 percent you may be owed
Fat Jim’s presents its steaks at promotional prices. That is not a reading of the room, it is how the restaurant has described its own pricing for years, and Cebu Daily News reported the same thing: special promotional prices on the ribeye, the US prime cut and the tenderloin.
Here is the part worth knowing before you sit down. A promotional price and the 20 percent senior citizen or PWD discount do not stack. Everybody knows that much. What far fewer people know is who gets to decide which one applies, and the answer is not the restaurant.
The Department of Trade and Industry’s position is that an establishment has to compute both and let the customer take whichever comes out better. Assistant Secretary Amanda Nograles put it plainly in January 2024: establishments should compute whichever cost is more favourable to the senior. Automatically applying the promo and refusing the statutory discount is named as something establishments may not do, and so is the reverse.
So if you are a senior or you carry a PWD ID, the promo is not automatically the end of the conversation. Twenty percent off the regular price can beat a promotional price, and when it does, that is the one you are entitled to. Bring the ID, ask for the comparison before you order rather than at the till, and be pleasant about it. The rule is on your side either way.
The room changed. The plate did not.
Put the 2021 frames next to the 2026 ones and it looks like two different restaurants. Back then it was dark wood tables and paper placemats and cutlery rolled in a napkin. Now it is a bright room with white tables, timber chairs and plants along the wall. The coordinates on every one of those photographs are the same to within twenty meters, so nobody moved. They renovated around the same grill.
It is not a special occasion room and it is not pretending to be. If you want the timber and the folded napkins version of a steak night in this city, that is Luzern, which has been doing it longer than anyone. If you want the maths of a promo worked out to the gram, that is The Steakhouse by Carne and Deli. Fat Jim’s is the one you go to on a Tuesday because you want a ribeye and not an evening. All four are lined up against each other in our guide to the best steakhouses in Cebu.
Suroy Wear
A kitchen that keeps its own hours.
Fat Jim’s shuts on Sundays and on holidays because the people cooking are a family, not a shift. The Cebu Coordinates Tee carries the outline and the coordinates of the island that runs on exactly that logic. Made here, ₱999.
Island Series, Cebu Coordinates
How to go
Where. 888 Hernan Cortes Street, FLC Center, Mandaue City.
Hours. Monday to Saturday, 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Closed Sundays and closed on public holidays. Checked 30 August 2026.
Booking. The phone numbers in circulation online do not agree with each other, so message the Facebook page rather than trusting a directory listing, and do it if you are coming with more than four.
Prices. No menu board was photographed on any of these nine visits, so no price is quoted here. Every listing that carries a number is either incomplete or years old, and a wrong steak price is worse than no steak price. Ask when you book, and if you go, photograph the board.
Getting there. Hernan Cortes is the Mandaue spine between the Cebu City line and the national road, so anything running Mandaue along Hernan Cortes drops you at the door, and the Cebu City jeepney guide covers the codes. From Ayala it is a straight run over the border.
Frequently asked questions
Is Fat Jim’s open on Sunday?
No. Fat Jim’s is closed every Sunday and also closed on public holidays. It runs Monday to Saturday, 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM.
Where is Fat Jim’s Steak House?
888 Hernan Cortes Street, in the FLC Center, Mandaue City. It is a short drive from the Cebu City boundary and easy to reach from Ayala.
What should you order at Fat Jim’s?
The ribeye. Their headline cut is a 400 gram Certified Angus rib eye served with vegetable sides and a choice of rice, mashed potato, garlic rice or fries. The tenderloin is the safer order and the less memorable one.
Can seniors and PWDs use their discount on a promo-priced steak?
The discounts do not stack with a promotional price, but the customer chooses which one applies. DTI has stated that establishments must compute both and apply whichever is more favourable to the senior or PWD. Ask for that comparison before ordering.
Is Fat Jim’s expensive?
It sits above the casual end of Cebu steak and below the hotel end. What makes it feel dearer than the number suggests is that the promo pricing takes the statutory discount off the table for a lot of diners, so the price on the board is closer to the price you pay than it is elsewhere.
Photographed at Fat Jim’s Steak House, Hernan Cortes Street, Mandaue City, across nine visits between May 2021 and August 2026. Hours and address checked 30 August 2026. No prices are quoted because no menu board was photographed.
